1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of customizing a user's browsing experience on a World-Wide-Web site. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method of customizing the browsing experience of a user of a healthcare related World-Wide-Web site based on the personal medical history of the user, as well as a method of maintaining user privacy and confidentiality while using information contained in the user's medical history on that user's behalf.
2. Description of the Prior Art
a. The Internet and World-Wide-Web
As those of ordinary skill in the art know, the Internet is a global computer network which comprises a vast number of computers and computer networks which are interconnected through communication links. The interconnected computers exchange information using various services, such as electronic mail, Gopher and the World Wide Web (hereinafter, the “WWW”).
The WWW allows a server computer system (a Web server) to send graphical Web pages of information to a remote client computer system. The remote client computer system can then display the Web pages. Each Web page (or link) of the WWW is uniquely identifiable by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). To view a specific Web page, a client computer system specifies the URL for that Web page in a request (e.g., a HyperText Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”) request). The request is forwarded to the Web server that supports the Web page. When the Web server receives the request, it sends the Web page to the client computer system. When the client computer system receives the Web page, it typically displays the Web page using a browser. A browser is a special-purpose application program that effects the requesting of Web pages and the displaying of Web pages. Commercially available browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer™ and Netscape Navigator™.
Web pages are typically defined using HyperText Markup Language (“HTML”). HTML provides a standard set of tags that define how a Web page is to be displayed. When a user indicates to the browser to display a Web page, the browser sends a request to the server computer system to transfer to the client computer system an HTML document that defines the Web page. When the requested HTML document is received by the client computer system, the browser displays the Web page as defined by the HTML document. The HTML document contains various tags that control the displaying of text, graphics, controls, and other features. The HTML document may contain URLs of other Web pages available on that server computer system or other server computer systems.
Because of its graphical and user friendly nature, the WWW is particularly well suited for e-commerce, i.e. the transacting of business on-line. Today, thousands of companies throughout the world provide goods and services to clients using Web sites. Users contact Web sites to obtain specific information or to obtain the goods and/or services being offered by a particular company. The present invention relates to a healthcare related Web site which is used to provide healthcare information and other services to clients.
b. Customization
In order to provide enhanced service to its users, a Web site may attempt to customize the browsing experience of its users on a user-by-user basis. A Web site will typically collect overt information from a user, such as interface preferences and content of interest, via forms and mouse clicks. Covert information, on the other hand, is collected by tracking the usage habits such as Web pages visited, time spent per page, frequency dates and times of visits, etc. This information is typically recorded in some combination of databases on the web application server and cookies on the user's browser. On subsequent visits by the user to the Web site, Web pages will be suggested to the user based on the user's prior browsing history.
This prior art method of customization, however, is limited in its usefulness since the browsing history of a user is not necessarily the best way to determine where a user may choose to browse in the future since the interests of the user may change from day to day. Ideally, the best way to customize a Web site browsing experience is to use personal information of the user in order to make an informed determination as to which Web pages are likely to be of interest to the user. This method, however, has not been heretofore possible since, even assuming the Web site has access to the user's personal information, a method for categorizing and quantifying the personal information in a way that will enable a programmed computer to manipulate the information so as to determine Web pages which are likely to be of interest to the user has been heretofore unknown.
When dealing with healthcare related Web sites, the issue of customization takes on added importance since the information being sought by the user will often relate to a medical problem of the user. A typical user, who is not medically trained, will not necessarily know which Web pages will be of help to him/her as it relates to his/her medical problem. Therefore, the ability to suggest Web pages to the user, which will be of interest and of help to the user, is of immeasurable value and importance.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a new method of customizing the browsing experience of users of a WWW site in general, and to provide a new method of customizing the browsing experience of users of a healthcare-related WWW site through use of the medical histories of the users in particular.
c. Internet Privacy
The issue of Internet privacy is one of the leading issues in cyberspace today, arising from the fact that many Web sites collect personal information from their users (e.g., a Web site which sell products may collect and store the name, address and credit card number of its customers). When dealing with highly sensitive information such as personal medical records, the issue of on-line privacy takes on added importance.
To protect privacy on the Internet, the United States has enacted legislation and has legislation pending designed to protect Internet users from misuse and unapproved dissemination of their personal information. Additionally, most Web sites use state of the art techniques to ensure the confidentiality of the data stored on their sites as well as data transferred over the Internet. Despite these efforts, as those of ordinary skill in the art know, personal information is not 100% secure on the Internet.
Accordingly, it is also an object of the present invention to provide a new method of ensuring the privacy of personal information on the Internet in general, and ensuring the privacy of medical records in particular.
Personal medical information has been used for quite some time by the medical industry without violating the privacy of the patients to whom the data refer. In most cases this is done by aggregating (summarizing collections of) the information into groups sufficiently large such that no individual can be identified. For uses where individual information is needed, this has been accomplished by the simple expedient of removing all information that can be used, either individually or in combination, to identify the name of the patient. In many cases the information does not have to be completely removed, but can be “weakened” to where it is non-identifying (e.g., replace birthday with birth year, or “before 1910” for patients where even the birth year might be identifying; replace zip code with Census Bureau Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) or equivalent). If an individual needs to be tracked over a number of data sources, a unique identifier (UID) is appended to the information in the place of a name or social security number. The supplier of the medical data knows who the UID refers to, but the user of the data does not. However, by combining all data held under a given UID, individuals can be tracked over many data sources, source records, and time periods.
The weaknesses of the UID approach for use on a third party, personalized Web site is threefold. First, supplier UIDs change with time, and are not consistent among suppliers. Therefore, a supplier-based UID is not valid within a supplier for more than a few years, and cannot be used to track a patient between suppliers at all. Second, using a supplier assigned UID might let the supplier inappropriately gather information provided by a patient to the third party Web site. Third, the standard UID scheme offers no mechanism by which a patient can access his/her medical data without the Web site knowing the identity of the patient.
The Universal Anonymous IdentifierSM methodology presented herein is a significant enhancement of the state of the art in standard UID processing in the healthcare industry and solves the issues with the standard UID approach that are mentioned above.